Teaching and Learning in a Net-Centric World

OERs

Our friends from the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL) have just had published a very interesting article that seems to be a first step towards helping education and training institutions re purpose their content for multiple audiences. This is an important, yet very challenging task that requires that courses be created without a single audience in mind. Besides the targeting and language challenges of multiple audiences, the technical challenges are also many and this paper presents a possible solution.

Just to back up a bit, you may remember the excitement of educational Modeling Languages which evolved into IMS Learning Design. The promise of these efforts was to provide specifications and tools that allowed instructional sequences to be formally described and tagged, thus setting the stage for repurposing, search filter etc. I was particularly enamoured with the idea that Learning Design would do for education what standard notation from the 11 century did for music. I experimented with some hand coding of content. But the standard had too major problems, notably lack of markup tools and runtime engines and a very fine level of granularity that required far too much effort to code. This effort was led by Rob Koper from UNL. Continue reading →

The email below resonated with on a number of levels. I spent 15 years in Northern Alberta on a homestead as part of “back to the land ” movement. During that time the group of urban ex-pats in the area held a number of work bees, barn railings or general “help each other out days” – all of which ended in home grown music, wine and smoke!

Thus the idea of real time (F2F or online) work together to accomplish a specify and time limited task is appealing. I’ll be joint just to see how it goes and to add a word or two on OERs.

If it looks productive and fun, I’ll try to organize a similar event this fall to focus on the lack of quality and in-depth articles in Wikipedia on Distance Education (e-learning, online learning) or whatever popular term is. I think many of our masters and EdD. students at Athabasca have much that could be contributed and this format might have the right ingredients for a significant contribution.

You are cordially invited to join us for a free “Wikipedia Barnraising” event on Saturday July 19th, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Pacific Time, at the Oakland Impact Hub, 2323 Broadway, Oakland, California — or join us online! Lunch and refreshments will be provided for those joining us in person.Since 2012, we’ve been working — with substantial help from many of you — to strengthen Wikipedia’s coverage of Open Educational Resources and related topics. We’ve worked to build a community around this goal — at conferences in the field, through our online “Writing Wikipedia Articles” (WIKISOO) course, and through the formation of WikiProject Open.

At the Barn Raising, we will focus on high priority Wikipedia articles: articles that are widely read, but that — despite ongoing efforts — remain poorly sourced, incomplete, or out of date. (In the wiki world, we often borrow the term “Barn Raising” to evoke the idea of a community coming together to build something substantial in a short time. It’s been described as a way to “make the impossible possible.”)

We welcome online participants from around the world — and we have a few tricks up our sleeves to help everyone work together smoothly.

This event is open to all. Our goal is to make significant improvements to OER-related articles; so if you are brand new to Wikipedia and/or open education, you might want to take a little time to prepare. We will send out helpful resources for beginners as the date gets closer.

We look forward to seeing you, online or in person, and to raising a wiki barn with you!

I was pleasantly surprised to see a recent conference paper (reference below) by folks at the University of Greenwich who are reporting their first year results from a project (Greenwich Connect) that is designed to induce a variety of open and social programs to the university teaching and learning communities. The surprise was pleasant because we have been attempting a similar project here at Athabasca University- known as the Athabasca Landing. However, it was unpleasant to read that the challenges they are facing are very similar to our own and some days they seem intractable.

The contrast between contexts is as striking as the similarities in challenges. Greenwich is a 2-campus University in the UK, while Athabasca is a 100% online and distance education institution in Canada. However we both share a passion “to enhance the connectedness of learners at a curricula and teaching and learning level” .

Shuman aptly blames Thrun, for blaming the students – they have personal problems, they don’t have access to multiple tablets and they are not Ivy League rich kids – suggesting that the MOOC depends on students who don’t really need them and who can learn under any conditions – as evidenced by their succeeding in crowded lecture halls their whole post secondary career.

But I don’t equate Udacity’s supposed failure with “ordinary” struggling students is evidence for the failure of online learning and Shuman’s contention that MOOCs can now be dismissed as “neoliberal wet dreams”. Shuman goes on to claim that distance education (at least in the form of correspondence courses) tells only a sorry tale of failure and that it has “never worked”. She may have trouble convincing the million plus students at the Open University of China, Anadola University in Turkey or Indira Gandhi National Open University in India that their education (largely print based ‘correspondence’) doesn’t and has never worked. Truman seems to argue that it is only elite students who can succeed at MOOCs, – discounting the 50+ years of research showing that distance education (including its latest instantiation in online formats) does work for many students- including the second chance, and poverty stricken. No form of education works for all students -including the ‘tiny, for-credit, in-person seminar”. Doesn’t everyone know of students from campus based schools that have failed to complete their program? Haven’t you ever dropped a course – I certainly have!

But perhaps most appalling is the staggering debt load, the wasted time and energy of both students and teachers and the coddling and cover up of poor teaching that marks much of campus based education today. That model is as badly broken and just as expensive as MOOCs driverless car ! Continue reading →

Offering degrees and certificates is the currency of higher education. Degree and certificates are very highly valued by students, parents, employers and postsecondary institutions. Despite occasional challenges to the authenticity of this form of learning recognition, attaining this final parchment is seen by both institutions and students as the culminating and arguably the only important manifestation of accomplishment, after years of study in higher education. The problem is that learning itself, much less wisdom, is not measured very well by these large scale certificates of generalized accomplishment.

One concern is that the degree as a unit of accreditation is much too large- does a four year BA in economics reflect the same amount of learning as a three year BA in classics? Does a BA obtained at a distance equate to the same learning as a BA delivered on a campus? These are very challenging questions to answer. Institutions are clear to set the number of courses required, the degree of specialization and the minimal grade scores for a degree, but these are, at best, very rough indicators of learning.

Efforts by the Mozilla Foundation to support institutional awarding of much smaller credentials (known as badges) certainly addresses part of the problem. The creation of a badge-full portfolio that details a student’s individual skills and knowledge accomplishments potentially provides a much more articulate and public record of accomplishment than a degree. However, these have (to date) been only sporadically adopted by higher education institutions despite student interest (see Santos, C., Almeida, S., Pedro, L., Aresta, M., & Koch-Grunberg, T. (2013).

The credential crisis has been exacerbated by the arrival of vast numbers of open educational resources (OERs) and more recently by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which provide a host of opportunities for learning- but to date only very limited opportunity for credentialing and public acknowledgement of that learning. MOOCs and OERs allow learners to participate in learning, either alone or in groups, from teachers and institutions around the globe. After watching an excellent Ted Talk, brushing up on your statistics skills by reviewing a Khan Academy video or enrolling in a 10 week MOOC, there is little doubt that learning can occur. But measuring and accrediting that learning is today, all but impossible. A few pioneering institutions are developing “challenge for credit” or credentialing examinations, but for most institutions this alternate (and potentially competitive) form of accreditation strikes too near to the heart of the current business model for comfortable adoption.

The OERu (http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/), a non profit collaboration of over 35 public universities, colleges and networks from around the globe is attempting to develop a better or at least an alternative model for teaching and credentialing. Each of the collaborating partners commits to providing a small number of courses, for free and independent study on the open net. Students are free to select and study any of these courses and if they choose to do so, they may apply to the delivering institution to write an examination or to do other work demonstrating accomplishment and in return they receive full course credit for that accomplishment. The content is available free of charge and efforts are made to allow for and encourage students to work cooperatively to locate and help each learn. The credential process requires examiner time and institutional effort to assess and to register this learning- thus the OERu partners can charge whatever fee for this service that they require. To date, the Open University of Catalonia is the only Spanish institution to join the OERu.

It is yet too early to measure how well this free learning opportunity, but paid for accreditation will be accepted- by students and employers and likely the most challenging, by postsecondary institutions themselves. But it is clear that we need credentials that are meaningful, that reflect real learning accomplishments, and that can be obtained at affordable cost by all students and life-long learners on our globe.

The New York Times declared 2012 to be the year of the MOOC (Pappano, 2012) and certainly 2013 is becoming the year to talk about MOOCs! Questions related to the design and inherent pedagogies, registration numbers, persistence rates, revenue models, neo-liberal agenda, fears and aspirations of all of us in postsecondary education have been ignited by this combination of technology and pedagogy. MOOCs are rapidly becoming the type of disruptive technology described by Christensen (1997) as cheaper, smaller, initially less fully featured and attracting a new set of consumers into an existing market.

Much has been written and much more will by the time you are reading this article, from when I write it in March 2013 – the MOOC terrain is under very rapid development. John Daniel (2012) article, does a good job of defining and describing MOOCs and clearly notes the different models and pedagogy (xMOOCs, cMOOCs) that differentiate pedagogies, practices and profits involved in today’s MOOC offerings. In this article, I attempt to update our map of the terrain and provide a lens through my 2003 Interaction Equivalency Theorem (Anderson, 2003) to help us understand and explain this latest development and/or fad in higher education.

I begin with a short description of the characteristic of the four words included in the MOOC acronym and try to show how each contributes to the complexity of this education phenomena. Continue reading →

have gotten generally positive, feedback and download numbers, I think largely becuase these ideas provide a bit of a meta theory to describe and understand the different pedgaogical models currently practiced on the Net. We have a very pragmatic focus in life and research and thus we conclude the chapter by arguing “that all three current and future generations of DE pedagogy have an important place in a well-rounded educational experience. ”

Most online courses today are based on cognitive behaviourist pedgaogy (think lots of self-paced training and scalable MOOCs) or on social constructivist paradigms (think LMS, paced course), with a focus on group building in student cohorts of less than 30 students per section. I outline below various learning activities which can be used to augment/enhance either of these generations, in practical ways, using connectivist ideas.

Two of the defining characteristics of connectivism are that the learning occurs through construction, annotation and maintenance of learning artifacts. A key characteristic of these artifacts is they must be persistent and be open, such that they contribute to knowledge, beyond the temporal or geographical boundaries of the learning group or course. The second critical element is that students be given opportunity, incentive and support to form networks that may (or may not) persist beyond the course, or with others not in the courses. These two qualities, open artifact persistence and networking opportunity, are for me the primary affordances of connectivist pedagogy.

Connectivying a Cognitive Behaviousist Course

Good CB based courses have clear behavioural outcomes and can and do work well for individual learners or in groups. In practice, a growing number of such courses have LMS support with options for group work, but these are rarely used effectively. The web can be used to create a very effective publishing, administrative, marking and assessment tool set, as exemplified in modern LMS. However, artifacts created by students are rarely persistent nor open and networking opportunities are often marginalized if in existence at all. Meeting the requirement for an open and persistent archive creation can be fairly easily done, merely by having students work cooperatively or individually on new or existing artifacts. Some that come to mind are editing Wikipedia articles, creation of pod casts or YouTube type videos, building presentations and content into tools such as VocieThread, curating content or recreating course contents (in groups or individually content on set like tools such as Piinterest or Learnist. Networking opportunities can be afforded through the creation of these artifacts or as simply as creating compelling asynchronous communication opportunities. I focus on asynchronous, because of the flexibility and capacity to run through multiple sections of a course, but of courses real time web conferencing WITH recording available asynchronously and opportunity for students to annotate and comment on the recording can be used as well. These resources should be left open to at least graduates and future iterations of the course, but they can have additional value if opened and welcoming of professionals or others interested in the domain of study.

There are obvious privacy and exposure issues to be dealt with when “connectivying a course, so student control of openness is critically important. However, it is equally as egregious to constrict the capacity for students to share openly. What is most important is the emergent learning that can result from increased network presence and resulting increase in social capital.

Connectivying a Social Constructivist Course

Social Constructivist (SC) pedagogy stresses the collaborative construction and validation of knowledge, so in many ways requires a less vigorous re-make to include connectivist learning activities. The SC courses are based on a group model and have a wealth of tools available within modern LMS to support this model. Indeed Moodle claims to be based on SC theory, but frankly, most of the other LMS systems provide very similar tools and educational paradigms. Making open, accessible and persistent artifacts is relatively easily done, but they must not be hidden behind a firewall or password, where even students in other cohorts are not allowed to view and build upon these artifacts. Once again, using the tools and contexts described above for CB tools can be an effective way to add persistence and openness to artifact construction. Most repositories and web 2.0 tools, allow for licensing of artifacts using any one of the Creative Commons licences (CC-BY – attribution only) being the most open and generally most connectivist friendly – though arguments have been made by Stephen Downes and others about the enhanced value and freedom of (CC-BY NC- SA) Non Commercial, & Share Alike that restricts commercial use and requires similar open licensing)

Adding a networking capacity requires moving beyond the closed group. The commercial social networks such as Facebook or Linked in and Ning are continuously adding network and group features so as to enhance visitor use of their services, but institutionally hosted systems such as WordPress Buddy, Drupal, open LMS systems or the ELGG based system that we have developed at Athabasca (https://landing.athabascau,ca) can all be effectively used to support emergent networks. Once again inherent challenges with privacy can arise and again, the only effective solution is to allow students to control permissions, not at the level of generic publication (like all blogs) but at the level of individual post or contribution. However, very liberal and open access is the ‘gold standard” using one of the previously note CC licenses. However, some students may have very legitimate reason for limiting their networked presence and these should be respected and accommodated.

Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.

This implies that one can still learn without enhanced interaction (that grounds connectivist pedagogy). I still believe this to be true. People can and do learn in a very broad array of models, models, contexts and personal inclinations. However the second theorem posits that:

High levels of more than one of these three modes (os student-student; student-teacher, student-content) will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences.

The cost issue, I wrote about when I crafted these ideas in 2003, has been reduced exponentially. Students and can do engage in advanced forms of all three types of interaction, with very low to non existent additional cost to any web based course. Further, continuing research shows the importance of time on task and commitment – often related to motivation. For many, social networking provides the essential glue to a course that enhances completion rates and program persistence. Thus, the efforts for “connectivying” a course may well increase the quality of the course, without grossly inflating the costs or time commitments – of teacher or student. If they do increase the time required, students may be the biggest beneficiaries.

Conclusion

The Net continues to evolve and spin off new tools with new affordances and opens adjacent possibilities for both learners and teachers. As perhaps the most important rationale for connectivying is for life-long learning capacity and capability. Connectivying a course empowers, exposes and trains students to be more effective and more literate network citizens. Enhancing such capability allows our students to be more resilient and become as Nassim Taleb (2012) .says – antifragile!

“The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better.

Most of the cacophony of comments and posts about MOOCs and their disruptive potential has focused on their free cost to students, high enrolments, superstar teachers and high prestige Universities.

Relatively little has been published, much less researched, about MOOC pedagogy. A thoughtful article by C. Osvaldo Rodriguez in EURODL mapped the evolution of the so called cMOOCs to connectivist generation of pedagogy that Jon Dron and I wrote about in IRRODL. Conversely, given the focus on measurable outcomes and dissemination of content, it isn’t too much a leap to suggest (as Rodriguez’s does) that most of the big name xMOOCs are following the mass education model pioneered by open and distance education institution which we referred to as first generation, cognitive behaviourist pedagogy.

But putting labels on delivery models, doesn’t really lead us forward, unless we are also brave enough to venture into issues of effectiveness. However ontological differences between the models make comparisons based on effectiveness challenging. It is easy for traditional and constructivist pedagogues to jump to arguments about educational effectiveness that have at their root, notions of intense interaction with teachers or at least with peers. Of course with 100,000 students one has to change normal definitions of “intense interaction” to even begin to argue about effectiveness from a social-constructivist perspective. Thus, most social constructivists focus on the opportunities for peer interaction and point to the emergence of meet-ups and online study groups as spontaneous evidence of MOOC effectiveness. I see these as a capacity, but in my experience of adding or even encouraging optional opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction, it doesn’t lead to much take-up (beyond those exchanging telephone numbers with potential romantic partners). However, with 100,000 students even a take up of a few percent is not insignificant and may be life-changing for some learners. Continue reading →

This year, Athabasca University will again be celebrating Open Access Week, with a series of free and ‘open’ noon hour (MDT) web casts.

The theme for the 2012 Open Access Week is “Set the Default to Open Access”. Athabasca University is proud to participate in its fourth international Open Access Week, between October 22-28, 2012 to broaden awareness and understanding of open access issues.

This event is sponsored by the UNESCO/Commonwealth of Learning Chair in Open Educational Resources (OER), Dr. Rory McGreal and Athabasca University/ The format consists of a series of noon hour webcasts exploring major issues and opportunities of Open Access and Open Educational Resources. Each session will feature an internationally known promoter and developer of open educational resources, research, or ideas.

Friday, October 26th Sleeping with the Elephant – Leveraging AU’s Position through Open Courseware Dr. Martin Connors Contribution of AU’s e-Lab initiative to Open Access and OER Development Dr. Evelyn Ellerman Athabasca River Basin Research Institute Repository: Enhancing open access, education and research Dr. Lisa Carter

Next month Athabasca will (for the fourth year) be participating once again in Open Access week. The screen shot below http://openaccess.athabascau.ca details the events during the week. Every noon hour (Mountain Daylight Time) we present Athabasca scholars – and this year even our President! The sessions are webcast using Adobe Connect, recorded and are open to all and no charge.

Open Access week is coordinated by the Scholarly Publicating and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) with many sponsors and collaborating partners. It is encouraging to see the growing interest in OERs from around the world.

Please circulate these links and we look forward to communicating with you online Oct. 22-28.